Plans are to take Timoshenko out of clinic by force - lawyer

Timoshenko is charged with organization of embezzlement of budget funds and an attempt to embezzle state budget funds totaling 25 mln hryvnas

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KHARKOV, August 7 (Itar-Tass) — It is planned to take Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Timoshenko out of clinic by force, may be late on Tuesday, the lawyer of the ex-prime minister, Sergei Vlasenko, told a briefing. Timoshenko currently undergoes rehabilitation treatment in the Kharkov clinic of Ukrainian Railways company.

“May be this will happen before the end of the day,” he said. “We have received this information from sources in the Ukrainian Security Service and the General Prosecutor’s Office,” the lawyer said.

He said force will be used in defiance of all recommendations of German and Ukrainian medics to “bring Timoshenko to the courtroom” and sentence the former prime minister for a second time before Timoshenko’s case is considered at the European Court of Human Rights.

Timoshenko is charged with organization of embezzlement of budget funds and an attempt to embezzle state budget funds totaling 25 mln hryvnas (more than three million dollars), four million hryvnas (500,000 dollars) tax evasion and the use of a payment card of a foreign company, from the account of which Timoshenko took almost one million dollars to pay for luxurious hotels and restaurants, without paying taxes for the sum.

Timoshenko serves the term for her first criminal case. Kiev's Pechersky court in October last year sentenced her to seven years' imprisonment on charges of power abuse when gas contracts with Russia were signed in 2009. Since May 9, Timoshenko, who complains of back pains, undergoes treatment in the railway workers' hospital in Kharkov.